A Long Drive In A Big Truck

This year, I decided to deliver Star Brand Beef myself. I wanted to do this for a few reasons. On the technical and business end, I wanted to experience the delivery/pickup process first hand so that I would know what it entails and could therefore speak with real knowledge when I hire drivers in the future, and to see what should or could be improved about the process.

And on the pure pleasure end, I was way overdue for a road trip. I was thrilled to have the chance to finally meet customers and readers face to face. And my delivery route landed me at my grandmother’s house in the Bay Area for a most wonderful visit with Svensto.

I drove 3500 miles in a rented reefer truck. I drove that truck into LA and across the Golden Gate Bridge, through the desert and through the night. It was SO MUCH FUN. And the best part was getting to hang out with people whose comment handles I recognized or who I’ve known only through email. Digital is never as real as real life.

Windmills and Joshua trees in Mojave, CA, where I spent an afternoon in a rocketship hangar and touched something that’s going into space.

Driving into LA. I figured traffic would be mellowest early on a Sunday morning, and it was, hooray! The roads down there are terrible though. Sections of the 405 made the washboard gravel roads around here seem downright luxurious.

Leaving LA, Sunday midday. I took this photo for Mike. He’s more comfortable spending the night alone in the wilderness in a blizzard than driving for five minutes in the light traffic of Billings. He’s never even seen traffic like this.

The ocean. Part of me will forever be a California girl.

Pretty wood at China Camp in Marin, which is where the photo of the boat house and dock from my last post is also from.

Door handle of the Boxster convertible I got to ride around in for a few days after my deliveries were done. Pure art.

Driving home, the Utah salt flats. This photo is way better bigger, click it to see it large. I was like a barn spoiled horse headed home ~ I could not wait to see the Farmily. Mike took great care of everyone while I was away; I couldn’t have made this trip without him holding down the fort and making sure everyone had food and love. He even carried his cell phone around so that I could talk to the animals every few days via speakerphone while I was gone.

Away, and Back

I went on a trip. Shocking, right? It was business and pleasure and now I have nineteen animals of varying size glommed onto me to make up for two weeks of distance. It’s nice to know they missed me! Returning from an alternate universe is always jarring for me, and my email inbox is terrifyingly out of control, and one of my favorite people in my town died suddenly while I was away. Once I get my feet under me, I’ll post more here.

Chicken Butt

These are three of the baby chickies, who have been growing very quickly.
And are now exploring far and wide.

Yesterday, they ate out of my hand. So did Snake.
I’m officially a chicken convert.

THANK YOU to all you other chicken-lovers who left info and suggestions in the comments of Snake’s post – much appreciated, there is so much to learn!

The Short Story of A Long Year

The last twelve months have been really hard. Which is not to be confused with ‘bad’ – a lot of spectacular things have happened, but there has been a lot of time spent in hospitals and talking people off of ledges (both literal and figurative) and witnessing things I deeply care about getting eaten by the nothing. Which is why this blog has kind of fallen off its tracks. I kind of fell off my own tracks.

By spring, I was no longer managing my stress very well – I was walking around with my shoulders up around my ears and something as minor as stubbing my toe would set me off on a hysterical crying jag – release I wasn’t allowing myself or even realized I needed until I started noticing the pattern. Then Fiona had her calf and I wrote this in my notebook:

When Fiona’s calf was born, before it had even gotten up, Sir Baby came over to check it out. Well, he was just walking by, but then changed his course to come see Fifi and the baby – he is the grandfather, after all (he’s shown zero interest in the other calves that have been born around him). I didn’t want him too close, not until the calf had gotten up and nursed, so I picked up a long, straight branch and held it horizontally between Baby and me, eye level to Baby. He stopped his advance. The branch looked like a fence pole. Then I took a few steps toward Baby, still holding the branch horizontally between us, and he started backing up. An interesting experiment in psychology. Sir Baby had the strength and power to bash through me and my flimsy stick, or he could have simply walked around the end of it, but he believed it was a fence and that he was powerless against it – that he had to surrender to it. It made me wonder if the barriers we see as indomitable in our own lives are nothing more than sticks held at eye level.

I decided to test this concept. I wrote a list of things I was upset about (the first step is always identification). And one by one, these things that seemed so huge, so solid, so impenetrable, that had been governing me emotionally and physically, just….. evaporated. Like I was able to find the floating end of the stick and walk around it, one at a time, one after another. It’s an ongoing practice.

Related: Man On Wire. If you need a hit of faith and wonder, check out this documentary, streaming on Netflix. It is exquisite.